SALT LAKE CITY — After a series of accidents on I-80 and I-15 on Friday morning, several viewers reached out to FOX 13 asking if UDOT treated the roads before a round of bad weather.
“I left my home, I live over in Orem, around 6:55,” said Isaiah. “I went to drive up here for work here in Bluffdale and it took what usually is a 25–30-minute drive, probably an hour and 30 minutes, an hour 45.”
Fox 13 caught up with Isaiah later in the day, but if you were near 146 South or S.R. 36 this morning, it would’ve been difficult not to notice the multi-car pileups.
Quick-moving weather caused some surprises for drivers.
“It’s incredibly difficult to predict where these lake effect spring storms are going to hit,” said public relations director for UDOT John Gleason.
Gleason said UDOT crews were out Thursday night and Friday morning responding to the storms right away, but unfortunately, there were some crashes that happened in between their time on the highway.
“Typically, we’re always pre-treating our roads if it’s coming in as a snowstorm. These spring storms are incredibly difficult to predict where the impacts are going to be,” said Gleason. “The pavement temperatures haven’t dipped below freezing and we haven’t had a lot of issues because the weather has been so warm lately, so we didn’t pre-treat for this storm.”
Gleason said while the weather may be difficult to predict, what we can control is how we drive the roads in any conditions.
“It’s one of those things that we’ll look to see if there’s anything we can learn from it and if there’s any way we can improve on storm response, but we also need people to really slow down and drive for weather conditions and if you see those conditions changing in a hurry, make sure you slow it down,” said Gleason. “It doesn’t make any sense to drive freeway speeds in those types of conditions.”
